C – How do I test context switching performance?

How do I test context switching performance? First, we need to understand all the scenarios for context switching.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to list all of these scenarios :

1. Process context switching
2. Thread context switching
3. Handles signal context switching
4. Kernel thread context switching
5. Break context switching

Secondly, is there any way or way to test those context switching performance?

Any suggestions for context switching scenarios and test methods are warmly welcomed.

You forgot the context switch caused by the system call 🙂

The LMBob benchmark suite has lat_ctx tests that test context switch times. You can run it on your hardware to test the cost of context switching (http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/

).

In addition, recent Linux versions have a performance testing tool called “perf”, which records and reports how many context switches occur during the run of the tracked program, etc.

Hope this helps!